Strawberry and Chocolate (Tobacco Factory)

Strawberry and Chocolate has been adapted from Senel Paz’s short story The Wolf, the Forest and the New Man, first as an Oscar nominated 1993 movie directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío and now in a stage version whose writer is not credited in the programme but premiered in New York last year. But whilst the movie crackled with Cuban heat and eroticism, Nancy Medina‘s production is all English reserve.

The plot tells of a friendship in the heart of Castro’s Cuba between Diego (Craig Fuller) a gay, cultured, principled man and David, a young, intense and crucially straight man given a nervous bubbling energy in the performance of Matt Jessup. Being homosexual then was to be classified as counter-revolutionary with a spell in re-education camps, a friendship between these two can only be a dangerous proposition for them both. As David is sent to spy on Diego by the dangerously fervid Miguel (Ryan McKern) he finds himself being drawn into a world of books and culture that offers a different way to the one his homeland promises.

It’s a story well worth telling, a story about love and friendship that doesn’t go down the avenues you’d expect but in the end there is problems both with the adaption and the physical production that leaves you feeling disappointed. Sensibly the cast don’t attempt Cuban accents but to differentiate the vernacular they use a form of RP for the man of culture and a geezerish tone for the man of Cuba. The language sometimes jars, it doesn’t feel right with its ‘yeah bruv’s’ taking us away from Castro’s Cuba

Medina is a recent graduate on the director course at Bristol Old Vic (the production has come about from an emergent directors prize that aims to keep talent working in the Bristol area) and this production has been cast from the drama school but it feels as though the actors are occasionally miscast. Fuller, brings charm and grace to Miguel, but could do with bringing more snark, more bite to the role, he is almost Saint like in his portrayal, a direct relation to his Virgin Mary effigy hanging in his window. Jessup is uneven in his work, a ball of nervous energy that sometimes comes across as actor rather then character. This leaves it to McKen to take the acting prize as a thrillingly realistic bully one wouldn’t cross.

There is a beautifully economic design by Max Johns (well lit by Will Monks) with a vast stack of books taken us into the heart of Miguel’s flat. The story grips but Medina’s production doesn’t take us into the passion, heat and danger of Castro’s Cuba. It interests rather than touches.

Strawberry and Chocolate plays at the Brewery Theatre until the 13th September.